My gastronomic expedition to food heaven

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Hepatrip is term I learned in college. It means roaming the streets of Manila just to eat food. It's actually a cross of hepatitis and food trip, since it is believed that eating street food greatly exposes you to the risk of acquiring hepatitis. (Which strain, I have no idea).
Although now, I rarely roam the streets of manila in search of food, I still roam around to find the best deals and best flavors out there. I'll give out my unbiased (well, biased to my palate) opinion on what's out there, and what you should know.
So join me on my gastronomic adventure to food heaven

I'm a sucker for Japanese food, so when I saw this stall selling maki, I bought one right away! I bought this 150-peso tray that has 3 kinds of maki. One was maki that had half a crabstick, a bit of rice at the bottom, then the rice and crabstick was tied together using nori. The other maki is your typical california maki, the last one was like california maki, but instead of having the orange caviar outside, the caviar was inside the maki roll, together with mango, cucumber and crabstick, rolled in nori.

The maki tasted like regular maki. It was a little expensive for my taste though.

They also don't provide this small cup for the soy-sauce. Which is weird, considering that they should have provided it, instead of just soy-sauce in a small platic tube (for ice candy). Also, the maki wasn't cold, which is really really bad. Though there isn't any fresh food in the maki, It should have been at least a little cool, right?

Stall 43 was this sad stall. Not much people because the stall looked empty. They have lined up various plastic boxes of fresh garden salad. Being the garden salad lover that I am, I went to the stall and bought a salad for 50 pesos.

For 50 pesos, there sure was a lot of vegetation. Though I'm comparing it to Wendy's and KFC's salad, which are a tad expensive.

The veggies on my salad are plain green lettice, tomatoes, carrot sticks and onions. The dressing was pureed yellow mangoes.

The veggie selection is okay. A perfect blend of tangy veggies. The vegetables doesn't look that fresh, like the salad was already made for about 2 hours but it's okay. I would have wanted my salad cold, but I don't mind it in room temp either. What really bugs me is the dressing.

At first I was like, "What, mango dressing?" but then, I thought it was worth a try. A taste of summer, right? There wasn't anything special to the mango dressing. It's just pureed mango. Fine. One more problem, there wasn't enough dressing for all the vegetables. BUMMER! I love my salad to have just the right amount of dressing, maybe a lot of dressing. What's irking me is that the dressing barely covered half of the salad (not really cover as "cover", but enough for you to taste the dressing and the salad). It was a disaster. Good thing I was hungry, so I was able to finish the salad, even if it's like I'm just eating plain, raw vegetables.

I wouldn't recommend it at all. All the contents of that salad, I could have made at home. It would have been fresher and had more dressing.

Stall 27 was the first food stall I bought food from when Rastrillo opened.

It's mongolian-style. There are bowls of what you can put on your bowl, then have them fried by the cook.

There are a lot of toppings that you can add, it's like your typical mongolian restos. The best part is that it's only 100 Pesos!

Mongolian Base food
For your base, you can choose from rice 3 kinds of noodles. I forgot which kinds of noodles cause I'm a rice fan. Anyway. You have a nice variety of base. which you can also mix together if you want

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Rastrillo is a make-shift street food heaven every Friday. They close down one of the streets perpendicular to our office building at 5pm, and food connoisseurs peddle their goods on the street. It started last Friday (April 8, 2011). We're really hoping that it stays for a long time. Haven't tasted everything there yet. There's not much choice because it's just a short street, only a few (maybe 10-15 connoisseurs), most of them sell barbeque. Being the foodie that I am, I'll probably set aside money to taste everything there and tell you about which things I loved (and hated, if any). I'll try to feature each stand in my blog

Price Range
Most food items start at 100. It may seem like a large amount, but I swear, all the food looks so scrumptious, and probably taste great as well, that you wouldn't mind paying those hard-earned hundred bucks! I know I didn't!

Food Range
The first time I went there, these are what I saw:

A lot of barbecue stands. Barbecue here in the PH is way different from the barbecues I get to watch on the Lifestyle Channel. Here we don't usually grill slabs of meat. Barbecue here are like kebobs, minus the veggies. It's just pure meat on the stick. Also, the meat variety here is different. Of course we have the traditional pork (which is what we call here barbecue) or chicken meat (Didn't see chicken in Rastrillo though). But we also have the weirder variety, like the Isaw ng Manok (Chicken intestines), Isaw ng Baboy (Pig intestines), Dugo or Betamax (Pig blood, shaped like miniature betamax tapes), Adidas (Chicken feet), and jumbo hotdogs. I'll try to sample all these barbecue stands, though I think they'll taste the same.

Drinks. From water to booze. You'll find it there. Almost every stand sells drinks. There also stands that only sells drinks

Dessert. There's this one stand that stood out, selling pastries. But there are other stands selling desserts as well

Pizza and Pasta. Filipinos love pizza and pasta! Some stands sell pasta and rice meals. Pasta here in our country is usually considered as a snack, so usually you get to see stands selling rice meals (which are considered full meals) also sell snack meals like pasta. Also I saw people eating this huge slab of pizza (like the ones in Sbarro!)

As far as I can remember, these sum up what my eyes feasted on last friday. I'll be going later again for an early dinner while waiting for my college friends to arrive in El Pueblo (we're having a reunion!). So expect a review on one or a few of the food stands there.

Since 711 is very conveniently placed near the office, I usually go to 711 to look for affordable food. I remember 3 weeks ago, I was really out of money, and I needed to eat. I forgot my packed lunch (yeah, I know, that was stupid of me) so I was so worried about what and where to look for food. I need lunch that is at 50 pesos, tops!

I went to 711 looking for soup or some soft food that could fill me up. I was hungry, but my throat was so sore that time. I had to find an alternative to my typical rice meal. Though, of course I couldn't find anything that could fill me that was within my 50-peso budget. I don't like consuming too much cup noodles (which by the way was what started my sore throat).

So after walking down the 3 aisles of 711 and debating with myself if I'd rather be grumpy with hunger or eat cup noodles, I decided to check out the cooling shelf where they keep the "fresh" foods or the perishables. I was looking at the boxes of rice meals, and to my surprise, saw this 39-peso beef pares meal. I was like "WOW! freaking 39 pesos only!!!!" So naturally, I bought it. Forget my sore throat. I need to eat, and this IS cheap.

So I patiently waited for my food to heat up, 90 seconds was all it took! Yay! Beef Pares in 90 seconds! I took my food to one of the 711 tables at the back of the store, and started to slowly chow-down the beef pares. I wasn't expecting the food to be yummy at all, which is good cause I wasn't disappointed. The pares was a little bland, and that's saying something, coming from someone who likes the taste of bland food. Yet again, I wasn't expecting great flavor, what with 39 pesos?

The food was placed in bristol-board box. Inside the box, on the right-hand side, is a small bristol-board box that houses the beef and the pares sauce. If you're the type of person who consumes more ulam or viand than rice, then you're in a for a disappointment. You only get 3 chunks of beef which looks tough and dry, but is actually tender. It seemed to me that you have to properly portion the ulam so that you'll have enough for your rice. There was a lot of sauce, which is a good alternative for the lack of ulam, but again, it's bland. When mixed with rice, you just get a faint pares taste on the rice, there was more rice taste than pares taste. The rice was soft. Not at all dry, which is great.

As for whether I was satiated or not, well, I wasn't, but that's okay. I'm trying to lose weight anyway. It's enough to not feel hungry, but not too much to make you feel full.

Overall, my experience with the 711 Beef Pares Pinoy Rice Meal is okay. In fact I bought one this morning for breakfast. I highly recommend it for people on a budget who don't mind eating just enough.

I had a loaf of bread last week that I needed to consume. Since I wanted something with bread, I went to 711 and looked for sandwich spreads. I saw this Century Tuna Mayo Spread beside the liver spreads. Naturally, I was curious. I love tuna. I was thinking along the lines of a tuna sandwich, so I was thinking, JACKPOT!

The can has this ring on-top, similar to what canned sodas have, only bigger. Like the ones in vienna sausages. It's easy to open, which is great, since I think I'll die of tetanus if I use the can opener in our office pantry. The downside of the can though was the can structure itself. I used a butter knife to scoop out the spread, which is what we normally use for spreads. It was hard to scoop the stuff out when I was running out of spread.

The consistency of the spread was a little runny. When I saw it, I was dubious with the amount of tuna and mayo in it. I mean, I buy tuna, I buy mayo, I make tuna spreads out of the tuna and the mayo, but it wasn't runny at all. There were very few chunks/flakes of tuna on it. There was actually a point where I was wondering why aren't there much tuna chunks/flakes in it. Makes me think that the tuna in that spread was probably the wasted tuna crumbs they get from flaking the tuna.

The taste of the spread is consistent with how the spread looks like though. It didn't taste anything special. Heck, it tasted like liver spread. And honestly, if I wanted liver spread, I'd buy liver spread, right? I was looking for the "tuna-sandwich" taste but I didn't get it at all. Let alone the "tuna" taste.

On the bright side though, since Century made it, it's a hit for health buffs. It has Omega 3 DHA, low in cholesterol, 0 trans fat and no preservatives. They're also marketing it as a sort of pate. They have recipes in their website. You may want to check it out: http://www.centurytuna.ph/allmayorecipes.php